Saturday, January 07, 2006

There are all kinds of heroes.

NEW ORLEANS - Hugh Thompson Jr., a former Army helicopter pilot honored for rescuing Vietnamese civilians from his fellow GIs during the My Lai massacre, died early Friday. He was 62.

Their heroics take place in all realms, lands, and times. They are not governed by stasis, inertia, apathy, politics, point of view, religion, or personal benefit. Only by that which guides all our hearts. Only that which bonds us together as human beings.

SHERMAN OAKS - A suicidal woman trying to jump from a sixth-story balcony nearly took two LAPD officers with her until all three were pulled to safety by a city firefighter ..... The officers got to the sixth floor and found a woman lying on the floor of the balcony, preparing to push herself under the guardrail. "She looked at me and said, 'You can't stop me,' and rolled," Mireles recalled.

Mireles grabbed the woman's legs and tried to grab her collar, but the fabric of her gray sweat pants and top started to rip. Marron grabbed his partner's right leg and was hanging on, but the woman's torso was already over the edge, and Mireles was slipping. That's when Schori burst onto the balcony, grabbed Mireles by his gun belt and hauled both him and the distraught woman back to safety.